Friday, 29 April 2011

Yep! It's been an action packed few days. Thursday Night is Requestfest night and it was, as always right across the board with lots of requests, and of course the obligatory silly requests. No matter how hard I try to avoid them, someone always manages to do it!

And on to today's Royal Wedding... well I should have been. However, like a fool I forgot to offer my services as the Royal Wedding DJ - you would have thought with the amount of self-promotion I do, I would have at least got that one sorted!

Seriously, what do you reckon the odds are that there was a DJ inside Buckingham Palace today? Precisely what I thought. I would imagine it was all canapes and string quartets and if they were lucky some live band playing some of those 'old' favourites. I mean, had I been there I have Three Degrees and Tina Turner records (that would have pleased Charles). Trouble is.... I'm not sure they'd have appreciated a jazz funk set!

Speaking of the wedding - Wow! Kate's sister - sexy or what in that dress! And I'm not the type of guy who even notices that sort of thing!

Well, I'm gonna go and take a look at my diary to see what I have booked for next year - The Queen will have been on the Throne for 60 years next year - perhaps I should send them my card and a few links to my radio shows now and get in early...

Wednesday, 27 April 2011

Well can you believe how lovely the Easter weekend was? Has to have been the best one I can remember. But as usual, nothing much changes here at Murphy Towers. I spent most of the time either recording shows, or working on the new rebuild of my 'On The Radio' website.

I've felt that the old website looked tired and dated and didn't represent the growth of the shows. After all, when I first built it back in 2009, I only had one show which was called 'People Hold On', and since then I've done different shows before we arrived at the three shows we have now.

So a few weeks ago I actually decided to make a start on it by doing the Flashback page, and then from there started deciding how to go with the other pages.

I finally finished it yesterday, and uploaded it last night - I have to say I'm very pleased with the look of it.

Monday, 18 April 2011

As much as I love doing my radio shows, I'm always looking forwards to see where the next stage is. The last few days has got me thinking that perhaps this may be the time to see about moving into mainstream radio, or at least trying to.

Now what that entails is a lot of demos being sent out, and a lot of luck! The reason I say this is that it's a market that seems to have everyone wanting to be in it.

Let me give you an example - a couple of days ago, I saw advertised, a radio presenter position at a commercial radio station in Hampshire. It had been on the website for a day when I saw it and I was the 445th person to read it. Now this is on a trade website, so everyone looking at it are involved in radio in one form or another, or wanting to be. I looked at the same ad ten minutes ago and 945 people have looked at it. The closing date for the ad is 29th April, so I wonder how many will have looked at it by then. The question is, how many will actually apply. Your guess is as good as mine, but I can tell you this, I've sent off a demo and a CV. Will I even get an answer? Who knows.

One thing's for sure, it's not an easy world to break into, especially when it seems like there are more people presenting radio shows than ever. So how much time do you get to project yourself to the programme director? Well the demo needed to be 2 minutes. I've been told that in actual fact, many a decision is made within the first 10 seconds of the demo.

Whether I've got a chance of taking this to the next level I don't know, but unless you try you'll never know. What I do know is this, ever since I was a young kid listening to the likes of Alan Freeman, Tony Blackburn and Dave Lee Travis were Radio 1, it's something I've always wanted to do.

The opportunity to do Radio drifted into my life around 1992 when I joined Hospital Radio in Weymouth, but the time wasn't really right and although I ended up being Chairman of the Hospital Radio, the shows I did were pretty poor, and wouldn't get me a job anywhere! I ended up doing more fundraising than anything else, and if you've ever been a part of a voluntary organization, you'll find that there are only a few that actually want to do anything other than brag that they're part of the organization.

I was lucky enough to interview Bradley Walsh, Brian Conley and Tom Baker during that time, and I've even seen the Nolans in their undies whilst doing a jingle for me in their dressing room at Weymouth Pavilion! Fortunately they were a lot younger then than they are now.

I lost interest in Radio in general around the same time as I found it bland and uninteresting, and it wasn't until a couple of years ago when I found an oldies show on the net whilst browsing the web, that I again got the bug for Radio. It took around 3 months for me to decide to have a go, and since then, I can honestly say I've loved every second of it.

Now it does mean that I'm in reality, a late entrant into the arena, so that may hold me back. However, I'm not one to let that stop me, and so here I am 2 years down the road, doing 3 shows a week. Now, whilst this is a good add-on to my DJ work, it actually takes up more of my time than that does, and so I think I should really try and make a go of getting as far with it as I can. After all, I would hate to look back in years to come and regret not at least having a go.

Even now I look back to when I was 15 and 16 and wonder why I didn't have a go at seeing how I could break into radio. I suppose it was probably more to do with not having the confidence than anything else.

I'm not saying I'm the most over confident person now, and I won't earn loads of money from it, but in my heart of hearts, it's what I always wanted to do, so I should have a go don't you think?

After all, I may not be the best DJ in the world, but I've heard worse than me already on air. That's not an idle boast either. If you know me personally, you'll probably realise I am my own worst critic, and listen to all my shows to see where I've made mistakes so that I can see where I can improve.

If I can't get into mainstream radio, it won't be the end of the world. I'll just change my goal, and I'll most probably want the be the net DJ with the most listeners in the world. I like to set my goals high!

But if you know any Programme Directors who are willing to let someone like me have a shot, then give them a call! Failing that, get all of your friends listening to my shows, maybe one of them may know someone. After all, it's not what you know but who you know that counts...

So what else am I going to get up to today? I think I'm going to do some more work on the 'On The Radio' website rebuild. I started on it the other week, but seem to have been distracted from it by other stuff, in particular, my computer playing up in the week and my losing all of my favourites and now having to hunt round the net to find as many as I can again. The problem is that there were a whole heap of web sites I'd saved because I liked the look of them and was using them as an idea bank for the new website.

Typical though.

Good luck to Derek Smiley, who you may remember is running the London Marathon today. I gave him a mention here a couple of week's back.

While I think about it, if you enjoy reading my blog, feel free to invite others to read it. Also please feel free to become a follower. the link is on the main part of this page.

Friday, 15 April 2011

Yep, I've done another Requestfest! My fortnightly visit to the Blue Lion in Fen Ditton has given me a night of tunes to talk about. As many of you will know each time I've done one of these nights, the play list has been different, mainly due to the fact that we get an amount of different people in each time. Last night was no exception - it was very quiet when I first arrived at the venue, but by 8 o'clock there was a nice mix of people there. A wide age spread throughout the room last night ranging from18 - 60+ which meant that the night was quite varied. It makes it more enjoyable on nights like this.

Tuesday, 12 April 2011

Well what can I say? I've been looking through some old Blues & Soul magazines and I've just taken a look at the chart - wow! Music was just so good back then. I'm fully aware that I'm nostalgic, but just take a look at the soul chart that week and let me know what you think

Looking down the list there are only 2 of the songs I don't have (The Manhattans & Salsoul Orchestra) - but just look at how many instantly recognizable songs there are 34 years ago and still classics that I'm not afraid to play. Back then Boney M weren't thought of in the same way as they are now.

Further down the chart are great tunes as well. Take a look at the scan and see if you can see the other songs.

Sunday, 3 April 2011

I had loads of things to write about today, however after something that happened last night, I'm gonna forget the rest and impart some words today, that I really don't care whether people like or not. After all, it's my blog so I can say what I want.

Last night, I was DJing at a Northern Soul/Motown night and was playing to a floor that was pretty well covered by dancing people when an obnoxious, ignorant fool deemed it necessary to presume he was in his realm to think that it was OK to insult me as a DJ because of the format I was using. Oh, and he told me not to play at another Northern Soul event.....and he came back to tell again at the end of the night.

Now for all of you that don't know , I am going to shout the following sentence. I DJ WITH A COMPUTER!!!!!!! Have you got it? I am not a little kid who has bought a laptop and downloaded all their tunes from Limewire, I've DJed with Vinyl , CDs and Computer. I've DJed to tens of thousands of people, and without sounding big headed (and if you know me, you'll know I don't brag, but I'll say it just this time...) I'm damned good at what I do as well.

The reason I get invited to play at events is because I'm damned good at what I do. I won't make any apology for my previous statements. So when I get an idiot of the magnitude that thought he had the right to tell me I wasn't a DJ and that I had no right to be playing at a Northern Soul event because I wasn't playing vinyl and that anyone could do what I was doing, he was very lucky that I was professional enough not to rip his head off and put it where the sun doesn't shine

I've met a lot of really nice people on the Northern Soul scene, but I have heard about the fans that won't accept progress, and to be honest, I figured they'd have at least have the sense to not make themselves look like the bigotted prats that they are. But I was wrong.

As I said to him last night, he was more than welcome to go home if he didn't like what I was playing.

I made the decision to convert to computer purely to make my life easier. To be insulted for using a more modern tool is just pathetic. I wonder, did he go home by horse and cart last night. Surely the motor vehicle would be too modern. And God help him if he had to use a mobile phone.

I use a computer because it helps me to do my job more efficiently and with less hassle. I make no apologies to anyone for it. If you don't like it stay away. If you don't want me to use my computer at an event, don't ask me to play. I won't be offended. If you've got as wet as I have carting boxes of records in and out of venues at 2am in the morning as I have, perhaps you'd understand.

If you don't like me as a DJ, or don't like the music I play, more power to you. We all have opinions. Come to think of it, if you don't like me as a person, I don't much care about that either.

However, don't deem to insult me for the format I use to play my sets. It's what comes out of the speakers that counts and if I'm playing to a well filled dancefloor, it's not me that has the problem it's you.

And as they say in the old Floaters hit,

"If you feel that this is you, then this is what I want you to do,

Keep your opinions to yourself, because next time I get insulted by a feckwit, I may just take your head off.....